April 29, 2010

One of the major goals in redesigning Firefox is presenting a simpler, cleaner, and smaller user interface. Firefox currently has more chrome (space taken up with user interface) than any of the major browsers, and all that chrome reduces screen space given to page content. We’d like to be more efficient with space in Firefox, maximizing the usefulness of the interface and the amount of content shown.

The process of reducing Firefox’s chrome has meant looking critically at each part of the interface and how it’s being used. The goal is to find places where chrome can be minimized, both through efficient redesign and pure removal where functionality just isn’t providing enough benefit. This process led us to an obvious candidate for chrome reduction: the status bar. In addition to taking up page content, the status bar is the only part of Firefox’s permanent UI located on the bottom of the browser. This placement leads to the status bar being easily obscured, and sometimes requires resizing the window to view. For an entire toolbar of UI, it seems this slacker may not be pulling its weight in usefulness.

The status bar is home to a few pieces of functionality. However, with the new Firefox design, much of this functionality is already being relocated to the top of the browser. Other parts are not extremely useful.

Add-ons icons

Link URL preview (answers “where does this link go?”)

Resize window control

Current loading task

Progress bar for page loading

Notification that the page has finished loading

Link to Download Manager with download summary

Already we can start crossing items off this list. #3, the window resize control, does not require a toolbar. #4, the currently loading task, is not widely useful; most messages display unintelligible processes which are flickered too fast to be read. #5, the progress bar, we’re already planning to move to the top of the browser, attached to the tab that is loading. #6, the “Done” announcement, should be handled in the negative: if the progress bar is gone, the page is done. #7, the download manager link, we’re also planning to move to the top of the browser.

Add-ons are tricky to plan for because developers can do whatever they want with them, and put them anywhere in the UI. Also, add-on icons in the UI can do anything, from affect page content to launch a menu. Unlike the other parts of Firefox’s chrome, we have no control over the function and placement of add-ons. The best we can do is provide a space for add-ons, recommend add-on developers take advantage of it, and give them tools to do so.

An idea that’s been bounced around is saving the area to the right of the URL bar for add-ons. This is similar to what Chrome does.

The benefit of this placement is that it doesn’t add any additional UI to Firefox. The problem is that while this works for one or two add-ons, the more icons the user installs, the smaller the space for the URL and search becomes. Heavy add-on users would eventually have to choose between not having all the add-ons they want or having less space to browse and search. A better solution would be useful both to users who have only a few add-ons and users that have many.

One way we could handle this is by considering add-on icons to be modifiable, movable objects that the user can control. Since we can’t know what these icons will do nor launch, we can’t make decisions about their placement based on functionality. Why not gives users the ability to modify their placement, just as users can modify the bookmarks on their toolbar and the buttons on their UI? It seems inconsistent that we’ve been giving users easy control of so many objects in the Firefox UI, but not the placement of add-on icons.

By treating add-ons as movable objects, we can modify the appearance of add-on icons based on where they’re placed in the UI. For instance, let’s assume an add-on icon by default displays in the bookmarks bar. It would then display as a regular 16 x 16 icon. However, if the user moves that add-on icon to the upper toolbar of the window, we could draw a border for it so that it has a consistent look with the other buttons in the toolbar. Moving it elsewhere, such as to the top of the window, would produce a different look. The user would then have the ability to modify their interface depending on how they use their add-ons.

Next, incorporating add-ons that display more than an icon in the interface.

First is basically what Chrome does, a temporary bar appears at the bottom when you hover over a link. It works better than having a permanent place.

The second is a tooltip which doesn’t work consistently & could interfere with title text or other objects that appear when you hover over a link.

My favorite is what an extension called Fission does. Originally it just put the progress meter in the address bar like Safari used to, but it added an option in a later update to show a URL preview in the address bar, it reverts back when you move the cursor away. I’m not a UX designer, but I encourage taking a look at how it works with Fission before dismissing the idea outright, it might be off by default though, I’ve had it installed for almost 2 years now so I wouldn’t remember.

Good to know this issue is being looked into. Some easy way to have add-ons display in toolbar by default with the user still being able to customize them would really be nice – right now this requires some rather ugly hacks in the extension code and the icon still disappears if the user clicks “Restore Default Set”. Not showing the icon by default is not an option – most users will never find it then. This is probably one important reason why so many extensions decide to put their icon into the status bar, it is simply much easier to deal with. The other problem that every application (and occasionally every theme) has a different idea of what the icon size should be. Minefield now introduced yet another size which certainly doesn’t make things easier.

I think we definitely need #2(Link URL preview) to be shown somewhere on mouse hover over the links. Chrome for example has usable example, but IMHO it’s not the best one.
Add-ons part is really tricky. If you are developer you have probably at least 8 or more installed Add-ons, that’s quite lot to be shown right to url-bar or instead all over the firefox 🙂
Maybe it could be combined with jetpack’s proposal of “Single UI Element”, after all jetpack is going to be future for add-ons, right. Url of Jetpack proposal: http://mozillalabs.com/jetpack/2010/04/08/the-single-ui-element/

The whole “they’re copying ” argument isn’t really an argument against doing anything. If Mozilla learns from Chrome and finds the best way to incorporate a neat feature, complainers complain. If Mozilla decides to be stubborn and not implement a great new feature, just because they don’t want to be copycats, complainers complain that Firefox is “behind the times” and not very modern/innovative. Since it is lose/lose for Mozilla, they might as well pick the path that gives users the best experience.

As to keeping things around simply because they are familiar? Maybe you should stick with Firefox 3.6 and not upgrade. Firefox 4 will have a lot of new features and a great new UI. If you do want to upgrade, maybe you will find an extension that brings back the statusbar.

Personally, I’ve been using extensions like TinyMenu and Stylish to shrink the Firefox chrome for a long time and I am greatly looking forward to seeing more of the page. In fact, the great new look for Firefox 4 in Windows 7 makes me want to upgrade from XP.

When user hover over the Add-ons icon popup is shown with all addons that have icons. And if there is some interactive addon user can pin it to bookmarks toolbar or right to url-bar, etc.
I borrowed popup panel styles from Sptehen Horlander, hope he don’t mind.

I don’t thimk it’s a good idea to remove the status bar altogether. I agree that there is currently some functionality in, which is not very usefull. However, having in particular #2 and #5 (possibly also #1) in a static status bar makes a lot of sense: It is firstly very usefull information. Secondly, having this informatio at the very bottom is convenient in a sense that it is the least distracting way of displaying this info (since this area is usally not in the direct focus). I would discourage from using elements which are more in the direct user focus (or more active, like tooltips), since they might simply be too distracting.

Further on I don’t see the big gain for the desktop application, since screens are anyway getting larger and larger. The situation might be different for mobile devices, but then please do remove it only for mobile devices, and leave it for the “regular” desktop Firefox.

I think the problem of an overcrowded add-ons bar is mostly the same problem Windows users have with the system tray (I guess you saw the system of some less techical users, where there is no space for opened apps because the tray is just too big). Windows 7 found a “decent” solution to the problem (Vista solution was really bad instead), most of the apps don’t need to always have a visible icon, so by default app icons are visible only if they have something to notify to the user.
It is also left to the user the choice of whether always showing the app icon instead.

I think we could inherit some good part of this, at least for simple icon access, allow add-ons to notify users of important things but hide them otherwise in an apps palette (similar to OS X applications panel), allowing choice to the user to have them always visible if they use them often (adding drag&drop between the notification area and the add-ons palette and a context menu “Always visible” item). Add-ons would still be able to add other kind of visible widgets if they are needed.
For example i don’t need to see Adblock Plus icon unless it’s green, thus it could be hidden by default and notify me that i have whitelisted a certain page i’m on. Options would still be accessible from the palette, and i could make it sticky if i want.

Reducing space needed for add-ons this way could make possible to effectively use the search bar space without forcing users to put icons around the UI to find some space.

Regarding status text, it’s really useful. Someone suggested to merge it with the locationbar, but that is going to add too much functionality on a single edit bar. I was thinking to the fact autocomplete popup has double sized rows, and that we could effectively have a double sized locationbar, upper part would be a contextual bar showing current page’s title, or status text, or locationbar options (while typing in the locationbar). This would work pretty well if we are going to remove the title bar, but would dupe locationbar vertical space.

I tend to agree that the whole “kill the status bar” argument is weak too. If nothing else, it provides a place for “secondary” information and controls. Things you want, but that aren’t important. I think that’s why a lot of addons have moved there over the years. There is no place for stuff like that in this new UI. There’s a Firefox button, but its certain to be cluttered pretty quickly, just like context menus do if you install to many options.

Ideally IMO, the bottom of the window would just move to becoming another viable place for toolbars. You want to show some stuff down there, you can. You want to drag your addon icons down there – you can. Last I looked, the customizable toolbars stuff that FF has are relegated to things inside the toolbox. How hard would it be to remove that restriction though?

I agree that the status bar is kind of superfluous at times. Still, the Link URL preview is really important, I look down there every time I’m about to click a link that seems slightly suspicious. Google Chrome’s behavior is OK, but if you use the cursor while reading, the flickering becomes kind of distracting. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!

When it comes to add-ons, I like the fact that they lie down there in the bottom right corner, not taking up more than 20 pixels in height. If they will reside in the main toolbar(s) and be movable and you have plenty of them, you’ll need a new toolbar in any case and then there is no gain. I think Dejan’s idea seems interesting and I’d love to see that investigated.

If the “link URL preview problem” is solved, perhaps there could be a small button between the scrollbar and the resize area (or in the main toolbar) to toggle an add-ons tray that fits the width depending on how many add-ons there are? Most add-ons don’t have to be seen all the time, but if you want to see them all the time, you can.

Many Firebug users toggle Firebug between in-browser and minimized to the status bar. They toggle back and forth a lot. Placing the toggle button at the top of Firefox would require users to move the mouse all the way across the window to move between Firebug and the toggle button. (We have no use for the status bar, just the button in the lower corner). We could probably implement minimize-to-bottom as an alternative.

Allowing users to move buttons adds a lot of cost. Helping users is already hard enough, but if every user has a different UI there is almost no way to help them find what buttons to push. Fortunately very few users are likely to move buttons, but that is also another argument against supporting this feature.

Leave the icons in the status bar ala the idea of the extension bar, out of the way at the bottom of the screen. I hate clutter at the top of the screen, hence why I have no buttons there. To be forced to have icons up there would force to me to reconsider my browser choice.

Regarding Addon Icons:
I have three addons that have status bar icons. In my opinion, having them at the bottom right keeps them available, but unobtrustive. They are small icons with very little whitespace around them. Placing their respective buttons on my toolbar looks rather ugly. This will improve somewhat as developers focus more on the toolbar buttons. Forcing them to have borders would exacerbate the problem.

When i first read the topic of this blog, i thought, another bad removal idea i’m going to have to yell at, or be annoyed at.

But then, when i read on, it appears all possible problems from removing the status bar are actually thought off. I like the idea of moving extension buttons around, even while a heavy extention user like me (12 buttons in the status bar) it’s unlikely i will be able to move all my extensions away from it, so i will most likely reactivate the statusbar anyway. Still, some of these addons can be located at more appropriate places, so i would love to be able to move them.

There is however, one more problem i missed so far: The security lock for encrypted sites. 4 out of 4 support messages i remember from the dutch support forums about the status bar (being hidden) where from users asking where there ‘golden lock’ was gone that normally displayed on there bank site. Now i know Firefox today displays a sites security level by colouring the room around the favicon grey, blue or green, but many users are not used to that yet, and will start asking questions when the statusbar disappears.

@Dorus Thanks for the feedback. Reactivating the status bar with a pref will definitely still be available, both for heavy add-on users and people with interactive jetpack UI elements. The lock I didn’t talk about in this post – partially because we’re still trying to figure out its placement – but it’s definitely something that would also move to the top of the UI. Items like the lock and loading status are tab specific, which is part of the reason they don’t belong in the bottom of the page – getting full information about a tab currently involves looking up and down and up. I think we can do a better job of integrating related information.

@sabret00the Of course the option to reactivate the status bar will still be available as a pref, but I’m curious – you have no buttons at the top of your screen? Do you navigate entirely via keyboard so you’ve hidden absolutely everything but your status bar?

I came here to suggest exactly what roc did wrt add-on icons. Pages’ out of sight bits of interest are in the vertical dimension, so that’s generally the place for reducing clutter. Moreover, screens are very wide nowadays, and even the norm from 10 years ago included screen dimensions that were wider than they were tall. I know Opera and some KDE apps (granted, two things which I almost never use) have used side toolbars for a while.

There’s plenty of cheap space along the sides of windows, it’s just that nobody uses it. I don’t know, maybe it seems to exotic.

Even if the page-loading text in the status bar changes rapidly, it still indicates that something is going on—and in the event that something hangs, I can immediately tell what it is.

There seems to be a trend towards removing loading indicators in Firefox.next, and I think this should be done a little more carefully. There are already innumerable ways to trick people on the Web, after all; removing even more information about what my browser is doing from the default UI should not be taken lightly. I already don’t know where a form submission is going to take me, which is rather sad when you consider that the lynx family has done this for over a decade!

(Actually, I just checked and I see Opera has this covered. Opera is pretty good at unobtrusively explaining what it’s up to, actually; the detailed loading bar in the address bar, for example.)

Anyway, don’t be too eager to scrap as much as possible for an extra twenty vertical pixels. One of my biggest problems with Chrome is that, in their single-minded quest to make the frontend “simple”, they crammed a bunch of unrelated items into two menus and are still missing basic critical functionality like tab overflow. I’m not a fan of the utter disregard for my native theme, either. I’m sure it makes the 80% like it more from the start, but hiding everything in two Tools menus is not the pinnacle of UI everyone seems to think. Firefox has too much valuable functionality to just strip it all out in the name of artificial simplicity.

@jboriss The buttons I have are Forwards/Backwards, Stop/Reload and the Account Manager (Key) Button. In my Status Bar however, I have Weave, Test Pilot, AblockPlus, NoScript, autoHideStatusbar and Firebug (when enabled which is rarely). I’ve also got my Menu Bar hidden by default.

It’s not that I navigate by keyboard, though I do generally go back and forwards via space/shift-space and reload with F5. However, anything more than that up there just looks like clutter. If the Account Manager doesn’t soon as a lot more usability (a mini profile on click), then I will surely also remove that too.

Strangely, I’m a huge fan of the Bookmarks Toolbar and have one that’s populated quite heavily and kept managable thanks to the add-on Smart Bookmarks. I also store the Ubiquity button on the far right, though seldom use that in favour of ctrl-space. Though I have a few gripes with Ubiquity, mainly the UI, so don’t use it too much.

The thing is though, the status bar for me is for two things. I like to see where a link is pointing too before I click it and I like quick access to my extensions. Prior to TRIM shutting down, I had a JetPack that upon clicking the button in the status bar, it would TRIM the page and copy the URL to the clipboard. I’d use that button around 5-15 times a day and even programmed the option to have it on the navigation bar. Not only was it a nuisance going all the way up there and navigating away from the page, it also didn’t look right. To put it on the left of the screen would’ve broken usability even more. As when you scroll on a page, you almost always certainly have your mouse around the right edge of the screen.

I do believe that the Status Bar as it is, is currently broken. Some things are left click, some are left click for a menu and others are right click for a menu. There does need to be some sort of rule-set here. I’ve recently read about what the UX team for Ubuntu have done in regards to their Notification Area/System Tray and that’s interesting reading.

But literally, the most exciting thing I’ve seen in regards to the status bar and it’s actually one of the reasons I use Minefield as I’m eager to see it implemented, is this extension bar: http://mozillalabs.com/jetpack/files/2010/04/extension_bar.png (courtesy of the JetPack team), that goes a long way to creating a uniform look and feel for the status bar.

I just tried to use the link extension, but didn’t do anything on current nightly so it may need to be updated. Is having the status bar the same as a custom toolbar? What about turning it into a toolbar item and put it in the custom menu so we can add it to the bookmarks menu or somewhere. I like the Jetpack idea, and Extension/Addons object.

For the Status bar/Link info and preview, I think that should be custom object that can be added to toolbars, that would help.

Point being if we provide containers (places to put objects) and moveable objects (addon buttons/status bar link preview, icons, etc), then you can remove the status bar.

I personally like to see when the transfering objects get hung up.. like on a 3rd party script and having it right there where its always been is so second nature for 15 years..

Once I found the Link Target Display addon I’ve been going without the Status Bar without any major problems.

The addons that show up in the Status Bar also show up alongside the Location Bar, so it’s no impediment for me to have the Status Bar closed.

One issue that arises is for those of us that like to have their browser window un-maximized. Having back/forward, stop/refresh, location bar, go, search field, PLUS addon buttons makes for an awfully crowded row. It gets hard to see a URL properly or see what I’m typing into the search field.

As a result, I’ve gotten rid of the stop/refresh/go buttons, and I’ve gotten rid of the search field (using keywords in the Location Bar to trigger searches). That frees horizontal space back up, but is probably inappropriate for non-power users.

I’m concerned about the solution of allowing addon buttons to sit anywhere in the chrome: in the title bar, alongside the location bar, in the bookmarks menu, and in the status bar. Won’t this confuse users with the inconsistency, especially if addons place multiple copies of themselves in different places (e.g. Readability appears in the status bar and alongside the location bar, AdBlock appears in the Tools menu and alongside the location bar, and Test Pilot appears in the status bar and in the Tools menu).

To a certain degree, this problem reminds me of the problem in Windows with the Quick Launch menu, plus the icons in the Start menu, plus the icons running in the tray, plus the icons on the desktop, plus the items running in the task bar. The same application can appear all over the place signifying subtly different things. The same problem seems to manifest with addons in Firefox now.

I know that Ubuntu is getting rid of the system tray (notification area) partially because of this problem. OS X tried to corral all of its launching metaphors into the Dock, with some success. Is there a way of reducing the confusion within Firefox?

Seriously though. You have to ALWAYS know what link you’re hovering, you have to always know what specific state of page loading is going on (sending info to the server, waiting, retrieving info…) and basically that’s it. The status bar is also a very important place for status stuff, like when you’re in offline mode, or when ABP is enabled or disabled or loads of other stuff.

Either way, if the status bar is enabled, it should be outside the content window and subsequently glass (Opera). If disabled, then the link preview should be shown as a pop-up as per Dao’s extension (Chrome).

I have the menu bar hidden, accessible by pressing alt made this possible.

I don’t use the bookmarks toolbar.

The only buttons I have on my toolbar are the back and forward buttons but even that is only for the history menu; I always use (Shift-)Backspace (or Alt-Left|Right) to navigate. Everything else is an easy and obvious keyboard shortcut as well (Esc, F5,

And, of course, I hide the status bar. For link target visibility, I use the Fission extension but since I don’t like the location bar/progress bar combo, I use a white color to effectively disables that feature and instead use the Tab Progress Bar extension for progress which has the advantage of showing progress for background tabs. Incidentally, I also use LocationBar^2 to get domain highlighting a-la IE8, which I really like.

There are only two things I miss. The first is a decent bookmarks button on the toolbar. None that I have tried work as expected, which would be identical to the Bookmarks menu so I end up using Alt a lot to get to bookmarks, although I am getting better at using the Awesome bar to bookmarks.

The other is a single extension that only exposes its functionality on the status bar (QuickProxy) so I end up effectively not using it as a result although it’s installed. Even that only effects my work laptop as I don’t need it on my personal machine.

I like Dejan’s solution of having some kind of UI element called Add-Ons and having all add-ons icon appear inside when opened (http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/9455/addons.png.) It could be on the top chrome, but as a Firebug user and person who thinks the top chrome has enough little icons in it already, I like muchinch’s idea of a little floating toolbar in the bottom-right hand corner. It could be like a little drawer (horizontal or vertical) that you open when you want to access your add-ons and if you are a add-on power user you can have it open persistently. So, for example, when I’m using Firebug a lot I’ll just leave the drawer open for that time so I can toggle it on and off. When I’m done using Firebug and I don’t want to see my add-ons I just close the drawer.

>This process led us to an obvious candidate for chrome reduction: the status bar

Ugh. It started with the merging of the stop and reload button, now the Chrome/Opera/Safari UI cancer is moving into the Firefox status bar. Makes me glad I use Mozilla (SeaMonkey) as my main browser. Maybe I’ll make another profile and give up on FF even as a secondary browser…

a little offtopic: im really missing something like sidebar-toolbars. Screens for desktops go wider bud reading wiede websites is not comfortable so authors limit them to ~800-1000px. So tehere is plenty room on both sides of browser (on desktop of course/wide notebook). I would like to see toolbars on left/right side rather than top. Do you consider to give such possibility to place toolbars on left/right side with option to quick show/hide?

There is a reason why web developers don’t have fixed width sites wider than 800-1000px: because if you do, you’ll be leaving everyone on 1024×764 behind. And Firefox is also meant to be used at those resolutions, don’t forget. Creating lateral fixed chrome is simply prohibitive.

@Tiago: So you’re saying that 1024×768 should do the same as IE6 and hold back the development of the modern browsers? Something as wide as the status bar used to be high or even something 100px wide that’s auto hidden, isn’t about to kill anyone’s screen space.

@sidebar topic: How many users did you interview to reach that conclusion?

The all in one sidebar is made of 3 parts, first a close all stroke, then some room for history/bookmarks/extension icons etc, and then the sidebar itself. All 3 parts can be closed or even disabled separately.

You can’t put the extension buttons that are currently on the status bar there yet, but that’s because those extension icons are unmovable.

@dorus: Sorry. Have been absolutely confusing this with another conversation. My deepest apologies, FAIL! on my part. I’ve been giving some thought to this topic. A sidebar on the right wouldn’t be such a bad idea. On the outside of the chrome. But I’m not sure it’s user friendly. I think the best idea is as I said, originally. Simply break it and start all over again as the Ubuntu team did. Users need to be able to have controls away from the navigation bar and it needs to be icon-centric. Perhaps not having the vertical scroll bar hit the bottom of the page and having the icons under that, where by they enlarge on hover and have consistent click controls is a good idea.

I’m a fan of the Fission extension (as well as a few other commentators) putting target links in the address/URL/awesome bar, both on my desktops and netbook.
On the netbook I use it to save screen real estate by hiding the status bar, and my excuse on desktops is not having to look in two places to compare URLs

Putting the hovered link on the address bar is simply a no-no in security terms. I can think of at least 3 ways to make it very VERY easy for the user to think he’s using paypal with that behavior, and steal their account data.

Hi,
I personally prefer movable add-on icons. For loading status and link URL preview, I prefer the Chrome way. Why? Because I have 7 icons in the statusbar, and Forecastfox with 14 icons; that’s equal with 21 icons., and there are too small place for link URL preview. (Most times enough for loading status.) If the add-on icons were movable, they wouldn’t take up space in the status bar which would only show when it needs to show something, and would be large enough if needed even in an 1024*768 window. (My screen’s resolution is 1280*800.)

My addon ‘Forum Preview’ has an icon in Status bar. User can disable addon by 1 (left) click. And can adjust addon settings (Options dialog) by right clicking the icon. I first created this ‘Forum Preview’ extension for Google Chrome. In Google Chrome whenever you browse to phpbb/vbulletin forum the icon will show up in Address bar as pageAction icon. I would like similar feature for addon such that the icon only shows up on relevant pages.

Maybe use the extension in both Firefox and Google Chrome to get the usage idea. The usage looks better in Google Chrome. I say for icons just copy the concept of pageActions and browserAction from Google Chrome extensions. Also see if the design translates to Fennec too.

@John: To be fair, the RSS system in Firefox is incredibly underpowered, which is why most hardcore RSS users tend to gravitate towards Apps like Google Reader. I’d be all for removing Live Bookmarks and reintroducing them as an official plugin that runs as an OOPP, runs in a tab and displays more than just the headline.

I use Google Reader myself. I use Firefox’s RSS icon to subscribe to things. I find it rather antiquated to subscribe to RSS using custom HTML, that may not be updated as a site changes, and often, a subscribe button may only be present on the home page or whatever.

Just a few other things, if you really want to simplify things, you really went all out with Places and all of that, the star button and unsorted bookmarks. I find it a horrible system and it seems no other browser has tried to imitate it. You could really go back in time with that one.

Chrome for some reason thinks it’s smart to place to stop button on the go button, completely away from the rest of the toolbar icons. After years of the stop button on the left side, I found myself reaching to the left, then to the right.

Underpowered? I like it and I use it all the time. Maybe it’s not as powerful as some dedicated RSS readers, of course, but it reads RSS and it reads it exactly like all the other proper browsers. There is absolutely no reason to remove RSS/atom support from Firefox only to reintroduce it as an add-on. I say keep it there, and introduce advanced features as an add-on. Removing it will only mean way fewer people will use them, and will basically mean less sites will make them available.

Google Chrome is a joke, for not supporting RSS/atom, and for other things. Don’t make Firefox a joke too!

@John
What are you talking about? Firefox’s bookmark system is the most advanced in the market!!! Are you having any specific problem with it? Going back in time is definitely not a possibility: Firefox’s places rule!

As for the stop button thing, it’s actually very smart. What’s not smart (at all), and why, among other reasons, Chrome is a joke, is not to let you customize your interface. Firefox 4 will also have a combined go/stop/reload button, but you will be able to customize where they appear.

@Tiago: Yes underpowered, the UI doesn’t “just work”. You have to hover to get basic info regarding what the story is about and that’s just to get the full title of the story. In removing it, you have the ability to completely break it and reintroduce it. Yes some people will be happy with minimal functionality as we have now, but others will be able to have full functionality as it’s designed by site owners. While I’m not part of this group that feels Firefox is bloated, I’m weary of said people and that’s why I feel that if you add something like full RSS support, it should be optional. To be fair, I can only assume that the minimal support as it stands is a product of wanting to keep the system relatively light. I wholeheartedly believe that at some point there should be separation from the browser that allows extendibility building on the extension platform.

To be fair, I use the Live Bookmarks every day. And don’t use Google Reader or anything of the like. I believe RSS feeds should be based in the browser rather than an email client like Outlook.

I just believe the system can be improved and should that happen, there’s no problem with only providing that usability for people that want it. If you already look at the update system, to install the extra usability would only take 30 seconds to download and install. I see nothing wrong with that.

To sabre, there is an option in IE to disable detection of RSS, maybe minimalists would appreciate that in Firefox.

To Tiago, I find the star behavior completely obnoxious. At least Chrome asks me where I want to bookmark it. If Firefox asked me if I wanted to store it in bookmarks manager, which is only accessible by a couple mouse clicks vs the menu/bookmarks bar, that would slightly be better than today. I do realize the suggested paradigm of typing in your bookmarks, but as a visual person, I prefer clicking myself.

The way Firefox wants me to type out to find my bookmarks, you might as well go with Chrome’s approach, which is to suggest results as you type from their own web database, URLS, not keywords. Often Chrome has the right result.

In IE or Chrome, I am in the natural state to click and bookmark, whereas Firefox forces me to bookmark with menu, else I bookmark something, only to resort it back to the menu or bar.

And with all of the talk about stripping Firefox down, I’m not sure exactly how “the most advanced” bookmark system fits with the direction Firefox is going.

bit off-T: I would like one more New Tab Button (“+”) on Tab bar. The second “+” button should allow us to open new tab in “Private Mode”. Though this would require ability to have normal Tab and Private Mode Tab to co-exist in one Browser window. At least make this available as a button in Customize tool bar panel.

OT:
I do pay attention to messages in Status Bar and at times this is how I find out why the website is taking too long to load. Status bar info like accessing google-analytics.. , or some other third websites.. and if the throbber is still spinning then I just hit the Stop loading button as the main content is already loaded.

A lot of people probably “don’t know how to use Firefox” then. It’s quite counterintuitive that most people use their bookmark bar/menu in the past, they have no guide to this new incognito method, and are told they don’t have a valid complaint because they have to click a button unintuitively twice to refile their bookmark.

But I do raise the question: how did *I* come to know that you had to click twice in the star? I believe there is always some kind of “walkthrough” when we install a new version of Firefox, but I may be wrong…

I knew also, but it’s just not an intuitive action to me. Maybe I’m old fashioned. Opera I think came up with mouse gestures and if I bothered with them I could probably be even more “productive” than I am now, but I don’t feel the need to integrate that level of complexity with me. The same goes with the whole paradigm shift of starring/not sorting and typing out your bookmarks. As for walkthroughs, it’s not like this is Photoshop or a creation app. Just my opinion.

[…] for Firefox on mobile devices and the upcoming Firefox Home release. Firefox 4 is heading in the direction of a simpler and cleaner UI. In preparation for bringing Sync to Firefox 4, we’ve reduced the presence of Firefox Sync in […]

Please don’t completely remove the status bar. If you want to hide it by default, that’s fine, but don’t get rid of it. Firefox is all about user customization and options. MANY users would be disappointed to lose the status bar completely. I like having a separate bar at the bottom to display information and store add-on icons (I have lots of them). I like that it’s out of the way but always visible so I can quickly glance down and see useful information. There’s simply not room to have all my add-on icons elsewhere.

They can do away with the status bar. Though IMO, I do love the informational tips that are presented via the status bar, but I think these can be done in the same area (bottom part) but fades after a few seconds. At least more area is used for screen / website viewing. 🙂

[…] framework, currently code-named JetPack, but also to resolve unsettled debates such as whether to remove the Status Bar and the struggle to improve the browser’s overall site-rendering speed. This entry was […]

“This process led us to an obvious candidate for chrome reduction: the status bar. In addition to taking up page content, the status bar is the only part of Firefox’s permanent UI located on the bottom of the browser. This placement leads to the status bar being easily obscured, and sometimes requires resizing the window to view. For an entire toolbar of UI, it seems this slacker may not be pulling its weight in usefulness.”

Jojo: Yes, get rid of the status bar and you’ll save me a whopping 12 pixels of vertical space. Whoop-te-do! People CAN turn the status bar OFF (View menu or right-clicking) if they REALLY want that 12 pixels of space back.

“Add-ons are tricky to plan for because developers can do whatever they want with them, and put them anywhere in the UI. Also, add-on icons in the UI can do anything, from affect page content to launch a menu. Unlike the other parts of Firefox’s chrome, we have no control over the function and placement of add-ons. The best we can do is provide a space for add-ons, recommend add-on developers take advantage of it, and give them tools to do so.

An idea that’s been bounced around is saving the area to the right of the URL bar for add-ons. This is similar to what Chrome does.”

Jojo: So you are going to remove a space that I use extensively and force me to do what? Allocate another space in a different part of the browser UI to contain the things that used to be in the status bar? Does that really make any sense?

Here is my status bar. Where am I supposed to put all the info in the status bar if it is removed?

WHY are you messing around with this? WHY not direct your obvious spare resources to more productive pursuits, such as figuring out how to reduce the memory footprint of FF? Or code to give users info on the memory usage of add-on’s. I am sick of having to shut down FF at least 3 times daily because when the the total memory usage gets near or over 1GB, the browser really slows down. I run probably 50 add-on’s and 12 plug-in’s or so. There is no reasonably feasible way to identify the memory usage of the add-on’s and which one(s) might be abusing that resource other than one by one trail and error over a period of months. And that is NOT reasonable.

May have been already addressed but this thread is long, so… Has everyone totally forgotten about Personas? What with all the hype about them in other areas, eliminating a users’ preference as to where the URL preview can go slaps that right in the face. I use uesrCSS to control the opacity of elements that don’t have focus so that I can enjoy the view that took me so long to choose from the many Personas out there. I even have the URL and Search bars go nearly transparent when not hovered over. With the URL preview now in the URL bar, AND in grey, it’s invisible and I obviously can’t get up there to hover over it to make it opaque and see what is displayed. So, I have two choices, install an add-on that I really don’t need (wasn’t ‘broken’, doesn’t need fixing) or ruin my view all the time. My fervent suggestion is to either make it a choice in the Options or provide a CSS hack, so we don’t have to depend upon yet another extension to get back what we like; that being customizability.

If people want to use chrome then by all means use Chrome Stop trying to make firefox look like chrome It is ugly and useless to me. I like the status bar where it is. I like the tabs where they were. If you must make changes make them optional If you must make ff look like chrome add a button on the top called Chrome my browser where all the people who worship chrome can make ff look and function like chrome.

Customization is the reason Firefox is successful. A million users can have a million different UI preferences, and Firefox can make them all happy. I don’t care if you hide the status bar by default, but if you take it away entirely, the spirit of Firefox dies.

I cant understand why its going to the chrome way, first the tab above url bar, eliminating the title and menu bar so it make it seems more “minimalistic” but then when we want to look or navigate to get an option its a mess and waste of time.

Now they want to eliminate the status bar and integrate it everything inside the url bar, making it feel more bloated and in some cases causing conflicts with addons.

The cut of UI to make more space make sense if we are in 1998 when 800 x 600 was the most used resolution, but now we have widescreen and high resolution and it doesnt make any sense, things like search bar should be eliminated and integratd inside the url bar but then firefox cant make that change….

Optimizing the code and improving the performance ITS THE REAL FOCUS that it should for the mozilla team, not messing the UI and copying your competition that have lower marketshare.

what its worse its that the new “addon bar” consume more space than the status bar and have less option….

After using beta 7 for a while I have to say that it incorporates some of the most questionable design decisions I’ve seen in the history of firefox. It contains a lot of good stuff too mind you but these are just so glaring for me.

In general, the overloading of UI elements is bad. It leads to confusion and errors. This is especially egregious when it relates to security related features.

Moving the url preview from the status bar to the url bar is an an accident waiting to happen. To make it even worse it doesn’t appear to be capable of displaying the entire url any longer. Just plain bad design.

I was very pleased to see the new window widget menu. Seems like a good idea. But the execution is flawed.

Why in the world weren’t the entirety of the menu bar elements available inside the orange button? It could have simply been another sub menu. Instead I find I frequently have to turn on the menu bar to find what I need.

Sleek, economical design is a laudable and desirable goal but it should not trump usability and security.

This is seriously one of the WORST possible things you people could be doing to my browser. It’s not YOUR browser or Bob’s browser, it’s EVERYONE’s browser. If you want the status bar chopped up mafia style and thrown in the address bar then make an extension. Now I’m seeing fools suggesting I need to install yet ANOTHER extension just to restore NORMAL functionality! Hey I need to buy a car but the wheels were on the roof!

It’s SLOW! Not instantaneous = fail! This is not a video game that takes two minutes to load so we can start messing with visual animations to entertain people. This is the part of the browser I look at to make sure I’m not clicking on “virus.exe”.

It’s a STATUS and therefore it belongs BELOW what it is the status for. Newspaper heads are above the status of what they describe. When you see names they are the status of the person they are associated with and therefore are below the associated pictures. It has been ingrained in so many aspects of our society and now you want us to look up?

It’s a complete total disaster! Why are you people wasting time and resources on this?

What was the point of Firefox at the VERY beginning? It was about having a customizable browser! Requiring an extension for NORMAL functionality is NOT customization, it’s dictation!

Stop copying what Microsoft is doing! They keep removing features and calling their products better when they’re getting worse. I WANT that space taken up because the status bar and address bar are SEPARATE and COMPLETELY UNRELATED. This has me seriously reconsidering suggesting non-technical users to use Opera instead especially once their extensions have the kinks worked out.

Revert the changes back and stuff these “improvements” in to an extension.

Why did you take the status bar out completely? Some of us actually like things we’ve used for years to stay the same. Why move it into the address bar where if you happen to have a smaller screen resolution it actually doesn’t work! It should at least be an option to keep it at the bottom of the screen.. You’re starting to be like Microsoft in just assuming that people want a completely different look every major build. At least make it an option instead of forcing us to go find a browser that doesn’t ruin the browsing experience.

It’s really stupid that they cut core functionality. You shouldn’t need a plug-in to restore it 😛

Advantages of removing the status bar? None, as it could already be switched off if you didn’t want it (in the view menu) – so why ditch it altogether?

Disadvantages? Plenty: Status information no longer grouped together in one area, but scattered about the UI. No networking status text anywhere in the browser anymore (can’t see what the browser is doing — and contrary to popular belief, it does NOT flick by very fast, especially if you’re dealing with pages that are slow to load because of contacting a lot of ad servers…)- this kind of information is essential from a user-security point of view. Link hover preview is incomplete, since the URL bar is already cluttered and doesn’t have enough space to display active address + hover address for any medium-long URLs. There is no page load indicator anymore (seriously, just a spinny icon and “loading” doesn’t say much, does it?). There is no clearly visible file download status anymore (unless you keep the download window open and watch the task bar…). I could go on…

I think they drank too much Google Chrome Kool-Aid (besides, they shouldn’t try so hard to make it like their biggest partner’s browser.. if you like Chrome, use Chrome?) and they didn’t know how to make it act like that, so they just ditched it.

There is a petition running on the official feedback board though to have it be brought back – http://bit.ly/dr7uIb

[…] it with a taller addon bar missing the absolutely critical feature of showing the link target? Jenny Borris’ post on this contains some extremely flimsy rationale for a change that affects hundreds of millions of people […]

Hi,
I use #2 a lot and am getting used to see #5 on each tab.
I think you missed #8 though which is secure connection (https). I know this now lives in the address bar, but the absence of a lock ‘icon’ or similar indicator may be a problem/perceived concern for non-advanced users. Of course, this is not a firefox-only issue, but there are still banking websites advising customers to check that ‘you see a lock in the bottom-right corner of the window’ when writing anti-phishing recomendations and such.
In chrome the secure indication is also on the address bar but it does show a lock icon. I’m not sure this is the best solution.
As a more general consideration, I guess one of the assets of firefox has always been that you can make it behave as you wish. As I understand it here we are not talking of *default* behaviour (status bar switched off) but totally removing it without any option to have it back. I think that’s what raises most critique and I agree with the fact choice is always better, and one of the reasons I love this browser.

Do not remove it permanently! The ‘more aero – less functionality’ approach is wrong! Status bar is for add-on mostly. Take it away and significantly decrease role of the add-ons. Without add-ons FF is really not so attractive. Do not shoot that Fox please! It would be Chrome everywhere! Do not be that stupid!

BTW, the new URL preview takes 1 line on top of the new add-on bar. So, it DOES affect the UI anyway, contrary to some specious arguments. And it’s distracting (flicking, flashing, … you name it). Also, I never liked this behavior, and it is one reason I don’t use chrome/chromium.

Be those guys smarter and give themselves more time to think, they would have come across a few better solutions for the UI :

1. Loading pages. Make the progress bar (status bar #5, see picture above) display over the url in the address bar. Good for accessibility.

You could do more, like showing information as in Opera (“Loading element 41/223”), but it’s not that important although useful.

2. The URL preview could fill the address bar entirely, and be hidden when not necessary (I precise because it may be not that obvious for some people, see #3 below).

The first draft of the URL preview in the address bar was not worked hard enough.

Then, there will be more room for icons in the new add-on bar.

But, hey, wait a minute! Doesn’t this new bar replace the old status bar?

So, If I understand well, they got rid of some bar and replace it with another. Would someone, please, explain me how it makes for a, I quote, “smaller user interface”?

Moreover, the “new” add-on bar can be disabled!!!

Some here remember it *works* exactly as the old status bar. The only new thing is that useful information is lost in outer space, if not completely lost.

3. Automate the disappearing of the find bar, which definitely in its current state DOES clog the UI.

4. Restore the lock icon. Go to https://addons.mozilla.org, and you will NOT see any lock icon anywhere. So good for security. The best location being on the left of the address bar, and the left of the site’s icon. And do *NOT* use colors as many people cannot seem them accurately.

Basically, most improvements have been made against security, usability and accessibility in favor of imitating competition or whatever that I do *NOT* care.

The guys in the 1st picture have just forgotten why so many people have adopted Firefox in the first place.

5. Add-on icons. Why, but why, don’t you make that bar vertical? I have a 1440 pixel screen width of which 30% is pure space loss. Remember, it’s very difficult to read on wide columns (go buy a newspaper or a book, and you will understand).

And why not make all those toolbars vertical, so that I can have the status bar back?

I see no point in removing status bar like that, except for trying to be “trendy”. Status bar is a feature useful feature, de-facto standard for lots and lots of programs so removing it from FF made it a little unintuitive to use as you have to search for all the info that was there(and I state that info’s uselessness as questionable) in the whole new places which is not really convenient. Moreover, as was stated above, behaviour of some of new info visualisers is quite annoying. With FF being famous for it’s customizability, I really cannot see why status bar was permanently removed without the way to switch it back on. Of course, “there’s an addon for that”, Status-4-Evar for example, but being able to easily switch status bar back on right away(as, thankfuly, was done for tab bar location) could be a very good feature to have.

Straight to the point! I will not be upgrading to FF4
unless a status bar is reinstated or at least an option is given to enable it. I believe that we as the end user have the right to enable or disable features. In this case the status bar was removed, so it would’ve have been smart for the developers to allow those that want the status bar to enable it, somehow.
So for now I will either use FF3.6 or Opera.
Really hoping that they make up their mind quick!

what the above poster said ^^^
still they should’ve had the option to choose “modern skin” vs “old style skin”
I hate it when they make the choice for us.
And I’m not exactly sure on what they base these choices – is it a bunch of techies in a room, is it test control group?
After much work I’ve now my old browser look – and believe me having a reload button separately is really nice.

I want them restored to their original easy-to-see colors: RED, GREEN, BLUE and Google’s YELLOW-house icon. Not even sure red and green were there since I can’t remember my beloved Firefox 3.6 nav bar anymore. Cripes!!!)

I don’t use google’s browser because I don’t like the interface. It is not a “clean” interface, it is a “wasted space” interface. I liked and I used, the status bar in firefox, and the current add-on status-4-ever is a weak replacement. I do not like the design trend here.

I have been looking for this information for quite some times. About four and a half hours of continuous searching, at last I found that in your web site. I wonder why Bing never display this type of useful websites in the top of the list. Usually the first few websites are junks. Maybe its time to change to another search engine.

If you’re like me, and you use the keyboard to navigate quickly on pages like Craigslist or wiki sites, you’ll find that once your selection reaches the bottom of the screen, you cannot see it. It’s because the ridiculous floating status bar has no option to dock anywhere. Maybe I’m an idealist, but I’m willing to give up a few pixels of real estate in order to, you know, actually SEE the page I’m trying to view.

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I have a number of addons that I have kept on the statusbar for years. I don’t like losing them. If you want to make the default to NOT show the statusbar, then fine. But don’t remove it completely for those of us who need it.